


tactile fixation

by elena_stidham



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Not Beta Read, Selectively Mute Link, Touch-Starved, Touchy-Feely, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 08:56:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15360852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elena_stidham/pseuds/elena_stidham
Summary: Even innocent, he craves her.





	tactile fixation

**Author's Note:**

> SONGS USED TO GET IN THE MOOD: A bunch of hair playing ASMR honestly and the Deep Focus playlist on Spotify  
> Okay I got an ask a while back on my Otayuri blog that talked about this hc with Otayuri and while I could see it there – I wanted to write something Zelink and I thought this would be a Good Solid HC for that. Plus I thought it was too precious not to write at some point???? I’m swooning so here’s “Link Can’t Keep His Hands Off Zelda: A Fic.” If you’d like to read more Zelda specific fics then let me direct you to my Zelda-specific tumblr, minuetofthewild. If not, you’d probably prefer my personal, elenastidham. Either way, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!  
> -Elena

When Link first discovers what this means, he’s seventeen.

It’s shortly after he feels her hair for the first time – soft, smooth, almost silk-like – when the princess rises from her tent and gently tugs at the knights back seams. She can’t seem to fall asleep.

Embarrassingly, she explains to him how when she was a small child that her mother would brush her hair for her and just play with it for a short while, enough to get her to fall asleep on nights when she normally isn’t able to do so. Halfway through her explanation Link seems to know where she’s going with it, and he already begins to pull himself away from his sheets.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to—” The princess begins, but Link was already holding out his hand.

The brush filled in the blank.

He doesn’t sleep in a bed that night. Instead, he finds himself completely mesmerised, brushing the golden waves that were spiralled along his lap, tickling at his sides. He discovers right then how pleasant she feels.

He ends up falling asleep against the wall, the brush still in his hand.

The next few times she asks this of him she doesn’t use words. Instead, she just raises the brush to him and he takes it without a single notion of complaint. However, it’s when he finds himself wandering to her, asking her if he could brush her hair again at night is when he starts to suspect it may be more than just playing with pretty hair.

But she allows him. The princess never complains at the feeling he gives her while he runs his fingers through her hair, and she falls asleep each night under the impressionable guise that this helps him fall asleep too. She doesn’t realise that this completes him, in some other way that he can’t explain.

It becomes a nightly routine.

Sure, it feels nice, Link seems to think, but it’s when he starts to crave her in the morning is when he realises that this is a _problem._ Not like, a bad problem necessarily, but a problem more along the lines of he can’t constantly touch the princess kind of problem. A problem of frustration rather than impure temptation.

It’s in the daylight where he finds that he wants to trace his fingers along her skin, to take her in and just _feel_ her all—

—but he’s suddenly ripped away.

If there’s one thing he remembers when he wakes up, it’s how _starved_ he feels. It’s not that he was desperately hungry for some food or anything of the like (oddly enough, that felt fine), but it’s a crave of _touch_ that wasn’t able to be satisfied – until he remembers _her._

He remembers her once, and instantly he’s able to somehow connect the points along in his mind that _this_ is who he craved.

Link manages his distance when she’s saved, careful yet hopeful she’ll bring up their nightly memories, but she never seems to. He can see a part of her wants to say something every evening, glancing over to him before just rolling into her sheets, but he suspects she’s blaming amnesia.

This continues until finally, under moonlit rays, Link hands her the wooden brush.

“I’ve used this before,” he says.

“You did, in fact,” she replies.

The princess waits a moment, avoiding his eyes, wanting to ask but instead he just sits behind her. The brush runs through her hair one time again. Nothing more is said.

In the daylight he finds himself craving his touch on her again. As before, it’s nothing indecent, but unlike before, he finds himself _acting_ on it. It starts small: simple, light touches along her back when getting her attention instead of simply saying her name, a soft glide of her hand when their fingers vaguely caress as he’s passing her a bowl of food, the gentlest of strokes on her cheeks when she’s feeling particularly unfond of herself.

This is satisfying – until he wants to kiss her.

Now _this_ is where he finds himself in dangerous water. He’s caught between two different fishing hooks: one that will yank him to follow through, most likely resulting in the end of their relationship, and the other pulling him in the opposite direction, having him slowly suffer in silence while feeling completely starved.

Either way all it takes is one tug on either side, and he’s ripping entirely in half.

He makes it to the end of the seventh night when he wants to be ripped in half already, hoping it would just put him out of his misery of wanting and waiting, despite knowing that nothing of the sort would be happening. Link glides the brush along the princess’s hair, watching her body still in silence as she’s finally slipped under. Despite this, he continues to brush her hair, for a while, his mind racing with all the thousands of ways that he could go about to kiss her – none of which would end pretty.

However, he suddenly becomes aware of a potential third option – something relatively harmless, and once he does it just once, he’s going to have to force himself to never do it again. No habits out of this one.

He waits, gently petting the hair beyond the princess’s face before he finally bends down. It’s a soft kiss, just lightly caressing the top of her temple, nothing too crazy, just enough to feel the skin pressed there before he finally peels away to sit up with a deep breath. He’s frozen for a split second, before he sighs, leaning his head against the wall and closing his eyes.

What he doesn’t expect, however, is a shift in pressure.

Link’s eyes snap open, suddenly aware that she was _awake_ this entire time. “Zelda,” he starts to speak, immediately trying to backpedal into an apology, before he feels her hand cover his mouth. Briefly. Just long enough to get him quiet.

When her hand lowers, all she can do is just let out a light-hearted, breathy chuckle. There’s only one thing that she speaks. Only one thing comes out of her mouth right then. “What took you so long?”

Link’s mouth dries, staring at her in awe, and before he realises it, their lips meet entirely. It’s messy, a little fumbling, but after a few seconds of practically hovering, they find their little niche that works so _perfect_ and _right._

 _This,_ Link realises. _This is what he’s been starved on._

The next evening when Zelda doesn’t sleep properly at night, she instead just asks her knight to crawl into the bed with her, for she, too, craves his touch. He obeys her properly, and within the bed they find themselves just holding each other, tracing their fingers across little trails along their skin, their lips sometimes meeting halfway.

And just like that, they heal.


End file.
